Shannon McIntyre

Let's start at the beginning and be very, very clear: innovation is not technology. Innovation is a mindset, a willingness to take a risk and change the way you run your business. In other words, a company doesn't innovate by adding technology on top of existing business processes — it innovates by changing those business processes, often with the help of technology.

We have a tendency to think of someone as either healthy - and therefore without an urgent need for our healthcare or senior care system - or sick - and therefore high-cost and in a state of inevitable decline. But we need to rethink how we view health and sickness.

We have learned from our grandparents, great-grandparents, and even older ancestors about what it means to age. Understanding the past is the best way to understand the future, right? Not in this case.

Many of us in the industry were at LeadingAge 2012 two weeks ago, where we saw a captivating collection of innovations in aging services. But after reading so much booth signage and hearing about so many companies' missions in this space, I came away with a new idea about predicting the future.